Rebel, Rebel
by Demeter1
Summary: In the possilby dark future where all is despair and there is no hope, Hermione Granger languishes in her isolated prison cell, waiting for the day when she might be freed.


**Title: "Rebel, Rebel"**

**Author: Demeter**

**Warnings**: Hermione-POV. Possible future-fic. Slightly AU. Angst, dark, death.

**Authors Notes**: This is completely one of those spur-of-the-moment fics. There's no credibility to support it and there's no connection between this and my other fics. It's a loose cannon that insisted on being written… so I satisfied my plot-bunny by writing it out.

**Disclaimer**: All rights and privileges to Harry Potter are trademarks and property of J.K. Rowling, Scholastic, Warner Brothers, Bloomsbury Books, Raincoast Books and associated parties. The author claims no legal responsibility for problems associated with using this work. No money is being made and copyright or trademark infringement is intended. The original story and characters and relationships within the fic are copyright of Demeter.

~*~*~*~*~*~

Once, a long time ago, someone told me that the moment your life is at a crossroad, you would know about it. You would be able to make the choice by determining the two sides. You would be able to look at the choice you made with either satisfaction or disappointment.

I sometimes wish I could find that person and strangle him… or her… I can't remember.

I didn't know that I had already hit the crossroad, hit it and breezed past my choices before even realizing that I had had a _choice_. That I _could_ have gone down a different path. This road my feet traveled over had only guaranteed me pain and death.

No joy.

No hope.

Nothing but the blackest darkness, the thickest pain, the most suffocating of fates.

Oh, Harry. If I had done something different.

If I had only prepared us differently.

Then we… I, because I still have not heard any news of where you are, would be free. I've seen countless people drag past me, their screams echoing in the night… I've even seen Sirius… he's dead now, you know? But you must…

I wouldn't be here… if I had prepared us differently.

You could have won against You-Kn… Voldemort. No use in using euphemisms anymore. He's taken control of the wizarding world and has opened the doors up to the muggle world. They know magic exists and their world has been reduced to one of daily terror and horrifying images. At least for us wizards, we have some sort of protection.

But they have no hope, none at all. But once again, I'm not going to sympathize. I don't have the time, energy, or the heart to sympathize anymore. They accuse us of the terror that inundates their lives. They complain and whine why we didn't do anything to stop Voldemort.

Well, excuse me.

Didn't we sacrifice our best and brightest?

Didn't we watch our comrades fall down one by one?

They had asked us to do something, anything, that they would reimburse us if we could just _get rid of Voldemort_. But they can't. Can't ever pay us back.

Nothing would ever be able to pay what we would held up in sacrifice for the peace we all desperately craved and still crave. Fucking idiots. I sometimes wish Voldemort would just do away with all of them and leave the rest of us in peace.

Oh, Harry, where are you?

Dead?

No, for some reason, I think I would know if you actually died. I would feel that familiar jolt, I would know from that uneasy glint of insane glee in one of the Death Eater's faces, when, if, they bring us food. I would _know_.

But in this prison where day and night bleed into a dreary, endless existence, I have not felt that chill yet.

So I cannot lose all hope that you are still alive, that I might see you storm the prison in order to save the rest of us. Until I see your body, I refuse to believe that you died. And I know that unless all hope, absolutely all hope is dead, you won't give up. You're not that sort of wizard.

There's still something left, Harry.

Snape is still alive and working within the Death Eaters. He frees one or two of us whenever he can risk the danger. The attitude at the prison is lackadaisical at best. They don't pay attention to who's in what prison.

As long as we don't create a ruckus or argue when they take one or two for their private amusement, they don't realize that a _loyal_ Death Eater did not release the occasionally missing prisoner for 'fun'.

I know he can't free me.

I understand, because I am one of the high-profile prisoners. The only ones allowed to enter my cell are the Malfoys, Lestranges and Voldemort. They know that you, Harry Potter, the hero of the wizarding world, will want my release most of all. That everyone else could go to hell, as long as the Weasley's or I were kept safe.

They know that as infallible as you _seem_, that you are only human, with human priorities.

Another hope is Draco Malfoy. He secretly altered his stance in this war and defected from Voldemort's side to ours shortly before He stormed the Ministry. He's one of the most trusted Death Eaters and though he cannot risk damaging that invaluable position by helping me, he has the clearance to enter my cell, and no one doubts that he 'plays' with me.

I act my own part and refuse to eat for several days afterwards in order to present a façade of a mentally deteriorating self. With that, he can keep me informed of the latest news within the Death Eaters and he takes my advice on whom to free. I have found out that Seamus, Cho Chang, Hannah Abbot, and Neville have all been able to escape.

They promised to fight until the end. Fight until we might someday see the hope. And they each promised to try and find you.

No Weasley's can be released of course. Lucius hates them too much. Draco has managed to protect them as much as he can under the façade that he wants to keep the younger ones for himself. Through that, both Ron and Ginny are safe and unharmed. He maintains them as his personal servants and manages to keep them out of the Death Eater's clutches. However… Molly and Arthur are both dead, and Charlie is near so. Bill's location is so far unknown by all the Death Eaters.

Fred and George are insane.

Percy has managed to make it into the ranks also by refuting the Weasley name and torturing Fred with the Cruciatus curse. I don't think that's the reason why Fred went insane… there were other factors involved with the twins. No one but Voldemort, not even Draco, knows what happened.

Percy is the same as Snape: a double agent. I would have thought that Lucius would have more intelligence than that. Or even Voldemort. But apparently, Percy started the infiltration much earlier, before the Death Eaters had gained such power.

Dumbledore's former students are the only ones between complete oblivion and the rest of the world.

It's too risky for Draco to give me too much information; there might be ears in the walls. Only things he thinks he can reveal by being an arrogant asshole are told to me. The news of the outside world is kept mostly alone.

But so far, that doesn't bother me. The outside is, at the moment, none of my concern.

Percy is also allowed on occasion to join Draco in speaking to me. Through these, he slips will-strengthening potions so that I can fight against the occasional veritasum they administer. Snape developed them so that the secret of he, Draco and Percy could be kept quiet. They never directly say that they are spying for Dumbledore.

Therefore, if in the end, the will fails, I can say with a measure of truth that they are not traitors to Voldemort.

Little comfort, but that is the best we can do at the moment.

Harry… I know you're doing whatever you can do to defeat Voldemort, but I also worry that no one has seen you for months now. Even Draco has heard no news and all information about you go through him; everyone considers _that_ his 'Potter fetish', which his father indulges.

Apparently he had the same fascination with your father. And he finds it very normal for a Malfoy to want a Potter. I wonder if you had some sort of obsession with Draco also… the two of you were constantly fighting after all. At each other's throats like… well, like me and Ron.

When we were at Hogwarts, we were so self-righteous.

Always thinking that Gryffindors were the best, that Gryffindors were the 'good' ones. We were the cherished children. The ones beloved and protected. The Slytherins? They were the family's black sheep. They were the ones cast aside. Outside.

Draco once idly commented to me that the Gryffindors should really thank the Slytherins.

Why?

If you had seen what I have seen… then you would know why I mourn the inter-house rivalry that was so _popular_ and _stupid_ during our years at Hogwarts. How we taunted Slytherins, how they sneered back. How covert glances, envious smirks, wistful touches were only fantasies and impossible memories.

Pansy…

Oh, Harry, how could I have been _so_ _wrong_ about _so many _Slytherins?

Do you know?

The Death Eaters… once, once I had thought that they consisted of all Slytherins… but it's not true! There are Ravenclaws, Hufflepuffs, even Gryffindors!

Harry!

Pansy, Pansy Parkinson, Slytherin to the bone, in an attempt to free me, was discovered as a traitor. Voldemort thought the best way to punish her, to teach his other followers, to make me _suffer_, was to let her leave this world right in front of us. I watched along with Ron and Ginny and ever so many others. She died in front of our eyes, after being tortured for hours by the Cruciatus curse. She cried for her mother, for her father. She begged for someone to help her, for the adults that had abandoned her to this cruel fate.

How old was she?

Only nineteen, twenty, fresh from school, once so free in the halls of _Hogwarts_.

I wanted to weep along with her screams.

The dark mark on her arm seemed to be a sully, a stain on her body. I wanted to take it and cut it off, wanted to hear her laugh, see her smile… Harry. Her parents just stood there, watching her die in the utmost pain and I wanted to shriek for the heavens to strike her dead and spare her such agony.

By the end, she was incoherent from the pain… but still she managed to claw her way up one last time and to apologize.

Whispered for forgiveness in not being able to save me. And then she died. When I looked at her lifeless body on the floor, I could only remember how we had all hated the Slytherins… but in the end, many of them were the ones who were trying to save us, trying to protect us from our own hatred, our own prejudices, our own mistakes.

Harry.

You know?

I wasn't smart. I wasn't clever. I wasn't anything but idiotic, forgetful, prideful, biased, _horrible_. If I had been any of those damning words, I would have seen how hurt some of the Slytherins were by our callous attitudes toward them. We could have been friends, Harry… it hurts. I sometimes can't breathe, wondering what we could have done differently in order to prevent this future of ours.

I asked Draco once, wondering where we went wrong. He said nothing went wrong. That the world had just ended up this way. That it was destiny.

Well, fuck destiny.

Harry, if you somehow actually can here me, please, leave me here. Save others. Save yourself. Save the world. Even if you hate me for this burden, do this for everyone. All the children. All of us.

Harry.

For the future.

For the ones who died, who will die, and the ones who will never see the light.

~*~ FINIS ~*~


End file.
